Wednesday, December 18, 2013

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“Inclosure came and trampled on the
grave

Of labours rights and left the poor a
slave

And memorys pride ere want to wealth did
bow

Is both the shadow and the substance
now.”

John
Clare, The Mores

On
1 May 1794, the writer Hester (Thrale) Piozzi of Streatham Park recorded in her
diary that the furze on the common had been set on fire in protest at the
enclosure of land “which really & of just Right belonged to the poor of the
Parish”. Yet even while she acknowledged that the protesters had justice on
their side, she criticised them for not “going to Law like wise fellows” and concluded:
“So senseless are Le Peuple, & so
unfitted to be souverain”.

The
senseless poor of Streatham were not unique. During the eighteenth century,
enclosure resisters throughout the country tore down fences, damaged gardens,
greenhouses and orchards, destroyed trees, broke windows, fired guns at
enclosers, attacked land surveyors, sabotaged farm equipment and blocked roads.
Most sensationally of all, they torched houses, barns and hayricks.

What
possessed them to commit arson – a capital crime – instead of “going to Law”?

Le Peuple

Picture
a farm labourer in the eighteenth century: we’ll call him Jack Straw. Not only
is Jack’s work hard, it’s also seasonal. If he had to rely on his wages alone, his
family would have starved long ago. Luckily his village has some common land
where Jack and his family gather fuel for heating and cooking. They keep a cow
and a pig which they graze on the common. They forage for food: berries, mushrooms,
nuts and herbs. Sometimes they sell some of the produce they’ve harvested in
local markets to bring in a bit of extra income. They gather rushes to make
tallow candles and thatch their cottage.

Jack
isn’t the only villager who depends on the common. Local tradesmen such as
blacksmiths or bakers use it to supplement their incomes during slack periods. Smallholders
pasture their livestock on it. Part of the land is set aside to provide income
for charitable purposes so even the poorest in the parish benefit.

No-one
owns the common, but that doesn’t mean it’s first grab, first served. The village
has appointed officers to regulate the way the land is used. They make sure no
one takes more than he’s entitled to, that the land isn’t over-grazed, that
ditches are cleared and animal carcasses are removed, that ponds are kept
clean. Jack knows he will be fined if he breaks the rules.

So
there’s Jack Straw, working hard but getting by, keeping his family off the
parish poor relief or out of the workhouse. Then one day a notice appears on
the church door: the common is going to be enclosed by Act of Parliament. There’ll
be no more wood for the fire or rushes for the thatch, and Jack will have to
get rid of his cow and pig because he can’t afford to buy feed. Jack Straw and
his family are going to be a lot worse off in the days to come.

Of just Right belonged to the poor of
the Parish

The
effect of an Enclosure Act was to eradicate commons rights, leaving the
no-man’s-land that remained available for distribution amongst the landowners. In
order to obtain an Enclosure Act, the promoters had to secure the consent of
the majority of land owners in the parish. Since consent was weighted by how
much land each signatory owned, it was possible for one large landowner to give
consent.

A
solicitor was employed to draw up a Bill. When the Bill reached Parliament it
was referred to a committee for consideration. The committee looked at matters
such as the compensation to be paid for loss of commons rights, the
distribution of the land, and provision for payment of tithes.

It
looks like due process, but in fact it was heavily weighted in favour of the enclosers.
There was only one stage at which objections could be lodged, and that was when
the Bill reached committee. So when Hester Piozzi wondered why the poor of the
parish didn’t go to Law, she’s wondering why they didn’t employ a solicitor to draw
up their petition in the due form and present it to the committee. (Petitions
which were not in due form were ignored.)

Going to law like wise fellows

Well,
why didn’t they?

Mrs
Piozzi herself provides the clue.

They
were the poor of the parish. They couldn’t pay a solicitor to draft their petition,
or retain counsel to represent them in committee. They could not afford to go
to London and lobby MPs, and even if they could how could they negotiate a
system from which they were completely excluded? Most of them couldn’t even write.

It
is no wonder, then, that so few petitions were presented to enclosure committees.
In Nottinghamshire, for example, of 171 enclosures, only nine were the subject
of counter-petitions, and the petitioners included an earl, land owners and “gentlemen”.

What’s
more, the land owners had more than legal technicalities on their side. They
had force. They could get away with including clauses in Enclosure Bills
imposing the death penalty on resisters. They could call on the army to help
them enforce enclosure – as they did in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and
Cambridgeshire.

A mist of flames

Jack
Straw and his neighbours have no connection with the great men of Parliament,
or the enclosure committees which are packed with land owners and their
friends. What can they do to make their objections known?

They
can light up the night sky with protest. Arson, or the threat of arson, is one
of their most potent weapons. They can promise farmers who deprive them of
their rights that “As soon as your corn is in the barn we will have a fire”
(anonymous letter sent to an Essex farmer, 1773). They can warn those who
“intend of incloseing our Commond fields” that they will wake in their beds in
a “mist of flames” (anonymous letter sent to Oliver Cromwell of Cheshunt Park,
1799).

So
Jack Straw is going to go out one night with a tinder box in his pocket. He’s
going to set fire to a hay rick. If he’s caught, he’ll hang.

Senseless
Jack Straw.

I am currently working on a novel set during the eighteenth-century enclosures. Murder, riot - and arson!

Here are some more blogs on the theme of "Casting Light Upon the Darkness" (Note: Links will go live on 21 December 2013):-

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About Me

I live in Bristol and I write historical fiction and non-fiction. In 2006 I completed an MA in English Literature with the Open University, specialising in eighteenth century literature.
My historical novels are set in the eighteenth century. To date they are: To The Fair Land (2012); and the Dan Foster Mystery Series comprising Bloodie Bones (2015), The Fatal Coin (2017) and The Butcher’s Block (2017). Bloodie Bones was a winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016 and a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Historical Fiction Award 2016.
The Bristol Suffragettes (non-fiction), a history of the suffragette campaign in Bristol and the south west which includes a fold-out map and walk, was published in 2013.